


Piety (I sure hope it's worth something)

by classical_mess



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Fuck Canon, and instead of going along with kakashi not teaching her sakura kinda just listens to the gods, bamf sakura haruno, basically sakura as a teachers pet but the teachers are the voices of the gods in her head, idk what this is, like hella vague at most times, priestess!sakura haruno, sakura haruno centric, seer!sakura, she hears the gods voices, sorta - Freeform, unbeta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-24 19:01:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22162837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/classical_mess/pseuds/classical_mess
Summary: Sakura wasn't who or even what everyone thought she was and that was okay. Her end goal wasn't to prove them wrong, okay maybe a little bit, but she would follow the path laid out for her in the stars. Kaguya was a dead woman from the second she decided she would forsake the other beings and Sakura was going to make it happen
Relationships: Gaara/Haruno Sakura, ish - Relationship
Comments: 27
Kudos: 335





	Piety (I sure hope it's worth something)

Sakura grew up in a religious clan but that was to be expected out of a clan of temple caretakers. The rituals and scripture that were necessary became second nature to Sakura and she could exercise a demon before she could even write. It was a necessity as her mother was going insane - Mad Mebuki of Monumomo is what they had begun to call her. One in the hundreds of priestesses that had fallen victim to the whispering of the gods. 

Everyone feared that Sakura would fall to the madness sooner than most of the priestesses before her. It was common knowledge, especially at the head temple of Monumomo, that Sakura has always heard the voices of the gods and more so they talked to her far more than any priestess before her. 

No one had visions as much as her.

They had begun to say it was the beginning of the end. 

Her pink hair was said to come from the gods. 

A mark of her place among them. 

That was before the rogue-nin at least

It was a bloody night, the altars were destroyed and everyone fled. 

An older servant of the temple who had once been the son of a merchant took the young priestess to his nephew in Konoha where he knew that Sakura could be reasonably safe.

\---

Konoha was so strange to Sakura. It was nothing like the Monumomo. Not even Konoha’s temple was much of a comfort. 

It was a relatively normal night but Sakura snuck out of her window and wandered through the streets. The cold fall air and the dark, empty streets were helping wane her wanderlust. The gods whisper in her mind sweet nothings and more violent delights but she ignored them all. 

According to the visions, Sakura’s life led her to be a ninja and that morning she had been accepted into the ninja academy. She wasn’t sure what the gods wanted her to accomplish, she felt as if she was betraying her people, but Sakura was a tool of the gods first. 

As her years throughout the academy went on her late-night walks continued as she looked to the stars for guidance. 

Anyone who noticed just thought it was one of the many quirks the girl seemed to have. After all, she seemed more dutiful to the gods them the Konoha temple servants themselves. 

The next few years were a blur to Sakura with only a few brief moments standing out Her friendship and break up with Ino wasn’t one of them. 

The broken man that was supposed to guide children in the art of killing. That first meeting made it. It haunted her really. Why must they ruin themselves for this will of fire?

The mission in Wave was another. It seemed to haunt her too. Anything that is worth remembering seems haunting. 

The chunin exams was another wakeup call to what she’d have to physically sacrifice to rise to her calling. Why did this have to be her job?

Sasuke’s betrayal is even something that Sakura can vividly recall when she’s in the throes of shame. She had never uttered lies like that before then. She wished she hadn’t even tried to pretend to keep him in the village. The gods had never been more silent then in those moments. 

\----

It was a late day in May when Sakura was in the temple and she saw an old face. 

“It’s time to return to the temple.” They told her. 

“I can’t just yet.” She replied and they grew angry. “My work here is not done.”

Sakura stopped going to the temple as often. She could handle a lot but the disappointment faces of those she cared for was not one of them. 

\----

It should be noted that no clan members, or at least heirs, were sent to the suna chunin exams. No one of blood somewhat important was in the suna chunin exams save for a few suna born. 

That's why Sakura was put on a team with Lee and Tenten so soon after the disaster of the last chunin exams. And why Neji was taken off the team. That's also why Gai-sensei looked so guilty since he told them they would be going. 

Someone had to be lambs to slaughter.

And they were the most expendable. 

They didn’t want to admit it just yet. 

The written portion of the exams went swiftly. The three of them were clanless and might as well have been civilians so they couldn’t afford to fail classwork. They were silent as they worked together to beat the puzzle that needed questions from other pieces of paper, it was very similar to the Konoha exam except there were ten questions scattered across the room they had to figure out without obviously doing it. 

They did well enough. 

Gai met them at the door of the exam room with the same guilty look from the past week. He gave them congratulations and ushered them back to their hotel. He was trying to keep them safe, to keep them by his side as long as he could, but Sakura was feeling smothered. 

The heat of suna reminded Sakura too much of the fires that burned Monumomo. 

She snuck out of the inn room, granted she left a note, but she also left her ninja headband. Sakura didn’t even need to think about it but Sakura’s feet guided her towards the temple. It looked so much more cared for than Konoha’s own temple. Suna’s own religious fever was deeper rooted than Konoha’s. 

This was the closest to home she had felt in a while. Even if it was because the sweltering heat reminded Sakura of her final moments at Monumomo. She walked up the temple steps, the stars whisperings grew louder until it was almost deafening.

“It’s past curfew for visiting shinobi.” A voice shot out breaking the silence of the night as they appeared in a swirl of sand. 

“Sorry,” Sakura replied in a small voice. “I was hoping to pray before the second exam.”

“I didn’t realize Konoha shinobi were religious.” The male spoke, who as they approached nearer Sakura could place them as Gaara. 

Sakura couldn’t help but chuckle at that with a shake of her head. “They aren’t, but my family immigrated because of the fall of Monumomo,” Sakura explained giving a half-truth- it was still more truth than she gave everyone else. 

“I suppose I can accompany you through the temple if you don’t mind my company,” Gaara tells her after a few moments of contemplation. 

“Of course you can.” Sakura grinned as they moved up the steps of the temple. 

Sakura didn’t notice the slight blush on her cheeks as they walked close through the temple halls, and she definitely didn’t notice the red of Gaara’s ears as he wished her goodnight. 

\---

They sent them to Suna to die. 

That was a fact now. 

The tunnels- the underground labyrinth that they were ushered into like cattle to the slaughter were dark and practically an unsolvable maze. They were tasked with going to the center of the maze fetching a totem or some sort then making their way out. 

Something would roar and it was inhuman. 

They all silently agreed to stick to the shadows. 

Sakura, well they all were at this point but nonetheless, had her hands up against one of the walls of the maze to make sure she didn’t run into it as they walked when she felt a familiar groove in the stone formation. She paused forcing the others to stop behind her as she felt along the indentions in the wall. 

“Sakura?” Lee whispered out only to be hushed by Tenten.

“I think I might know a shortcut,” Sakura explains as she crouches down feeling out the wall. “The walls, there are symbols like those in the temple…” Sakura trails off thankful that Lee and Tenten didn’t inquire more into what she was talking about. 

It far longer than what Sakura wanted but eventually she found where a brick sunk into the stone of the labyrinth. “There we go,” Sakura whispered to her companions grabbing Tenten’s hand to pull the other two into the secret passageway. “There should be some sort of lanterns here if there is incense still in there it can protect us from the beast. Either it used to be some sort of deity or it is what drove them out of the temple.”

“How do you know all of this?” Tenten speaks up as Lee passes a lantern forward. 

“I was supposed to grow up to be a priestess but the temple was burned.” 

That was all Sakura needed to say before the others grew silent and allowed her to take control. Priesthood was a very different life than that of a ninja and only one temple had been burned in their lifetime. 

From there on out with incense burning around them the group made their way through the tunnels, after a few wrong turns and dead ends to the wrong places they find where the tunnels drop down into the center room of the totems were placed. After they went to a wrong room with totems placed and an open scroll reciting their instructions, it was a set up as any shinobi should be able to remember their mission, and a few dropped kunai later traps were revealed. They left that room quickly. 

The actual center room was circular and actually rather small, the tunnel they had been going through had been shrunk down to a crawl space. It was a relief when they spotted the trap door and dropped drown a few more kunai and no traps were released. Especially when they heard the roars of the monster scarily close. 

They helped Lee down from the trap door above the room and he grabbed a simple totem before Tenten and Sakura pulled him up into the tunnels just as another team burst through. The group of Konoha ninja quickly shuffled through the crawl space. The last thing they needed was to get in a fight with another team. It would only attract the monster. 

When the group finally made it back to the room they began in and climbered breathlessly and desperate to ground level they were greeted with the surprised face of Kankuro as he jumped up from his chair. “Where’s your totem?” He quickly asked sleep draining from his face as he took in their rather unharmed appearance.

“Here,” Lee pipes up swinging the totem above him.

“You’re within the first five,” Kankuro explains before he points to a door behind him and gets comfortable in his chair again. “Head through that door there, you guys did good for Konoha-nin.”

Gai-sensei wept when he saw them and the one on one fights were doable for the group that had last year survived the Konoha crush. 

\---

Sakura remembered the first time she saw Naruto. She thought him a little god, but she knew better now. He shied too much away from the blood. Real gods after all bathed in blood and ate out the hearts of those weaker but it was the demigods, like Tsunade, and Sakura couldn’t help but think that they drowned themselves in wine. 

Naruto may be able to defeat his enemies but he would never be able to do what needed to be done. 

Sasuke didn’t deserve the glory and Sakura let herself be greedy. She wanted to be remembered not for her teammates that she kept getting stuck with but herself. She wanted to bathe in the blood of her enemies. 

\---

He lies. He lies. He lies. He lies. He is speaking blasphemy. 

It was reverberating through Sakura’s head. She may be bringing shame onto her family by being a ninja but she was doing what needed to be done and she would never lie about the gods. She would never speak of them in such a manner and she would never dishonor them so and she heard their voices. 

She had never heard Jashin’s before but he was speaking the loudest now. Her anger, no their anger, shook through sakura and she held her hands so tightly that she drew blood from her palms. The blood began to drip through her fingers drawing the attention of the villain before them. Ino and the others thought she was scared not boiling over in anger. 

“Are you scared, little girl?” Hidan asked as he moved closer to her position, bared open. “You’d make a good sacrifice for Jashin-sama.” He states simply. 

“This is blasphemy…” Sakura trails off as she is spoken to but the gods speak louder. “You’re in the scriptures. It has to be you.” Sakura murmurs softly as she takes out a kunai allowing for her blood to drip all over it. “The undead blasphemer.” She states a little louder. “The harvester of the innocent.” She adds glancing at his weapon. 

Her teammates were confused as she stepped forward.

Sakura was never brave like this. 

He made a symbol in the sand. 

She made one in blood on her hand. 

It should have been a normal mission. Sakura should have been able to pretend just fine she was an average chunin and continue on her merry way. 

But he was undead

And he called upon Jashin-sama

He spoke blasphemy 

It angered her and she wouldn’t stand for it

She may be a ninja but she was a priestess first

So she killed him. 

It was a miracle they could say, but everyone there couldn’t. There was nobody left and whenever they went to say something they found themselves choking on air. 

\----

It was rare when Sakura decided to be greedy. She was a tool of the gods after all and it was cruel of her to do this but Sakura was drawn to him. 

It was a week or so after the fight with Hidan and Gaara reached out to Sakura and they started writing letters after she had to go back to Konoha. 

She felt guilty, she shouldn’t be leading him on like this because she knew her fate but he made her happy and she was beginning to have so little of that. She couldn’t let him go. 

Sakura rarely saw him and when they did see each other it was often secret moments when their jobs brought them into the other’s village, but they were sweet moments and made what she would do is worth it. 

\----

“You don’t think we don’t want revenge- that we don’t vengeance?” Sakura spits out as she gripped her hands tightly. The gods grew silent and she couldn’t help but feel alone. 

This must be what Gaara felt like now but at least she knew this wasn’t permanent. 

Sakura wasn’t supposed to hate but she had never felt such anger towards a person before. Every word that dripped from Sasuke made her blood boil. 

“I’m an immigrant to Konoha, did you know that?” Sakura called out knowing that they were all long gone by now leaving her in the dust as always. “I watched my whole world burn too.” She added softer not even wanting to follow after her teammates in a mission she didn’t even want to do. 

She was okay with being left behind this time. It used to sting but it better allowed her to do her duty. 

\----

No one is sure of how Sakura went up the ranks. She always seemed to lurk. Sometimes she healed but other times she killed. She’d take up the strangest of missions but pass up others that seemed better. She wasn’t strong but no one could say that Sakura was weak either. In all honesty, no one was sure they had really seen her fight since her genin days. 

The civilians liked her and the council thought her knowledge in philosophy and ethics were helpful. She was unbiased and willing to say things more clan connected shinobi wouldn’t and so she became an advisor to both the Hokage and council. 

So it was no surprise when she proposed to by a clan heir of one of the lower Konoha clans willing to put up with her quirks to rise in the ranks. 

“I’m sorry I took a vow of chastity.” 

It stunned the whole council room, but they shouldn’t have been surprised. 

It wasn’t a lie but Sakura couldn’t help but feel heavy as she spoke the words. It solidified truths she wished weren’t so ironbound around her. 

\---

The letters began to get more scarce with the war on the horizon and it terrified Sakura. 

At least he maybe wouldn’t miss her as much as she would miss him then at least. 

\----

“I know how to defeat Kaguya.”

They all knew there was something different about Sakura so they didn’t question her. Her team captain gave Sakura the go-ahead to do whatever she saw fit. It couldn’t hurt anyway. They were headed towards death no matter what it seemed. 

Sakura walked through the battlefield with her pink hair swirling around her. She looked like a sacrifice as she strode towards what many assumed was her doom. Afterall her other teammates didn’t seem to be faring well and no one expected great things from Sakura. 

No one saw the way her hands shook

Or the desperate prayers she whispered 

Then they really wouldn’t have had faith in her

However among the shinobi, both enemy and ally, they recognized the pink hair of their high priestess. Above whatever village allegiance they had was their priestess, she hadn’t abandoned them. Now as they stood before a vindictive goddess, they began to understand a sliver of her madness - Sakura had been preparing for this, sacrificing for them.

In a mass, they all fell to their knees in the traditional manner to greet their priestess. It was like they all came to the collective decision. They could at least serve Sakura her due honor now. 

Many didn’t expect much from Sakura as she drew closer to the fight. Sasuke even paused just so Sakura could heal his wounds. Sakura, however merely took his katana from his hands and continued to walk forward despite Sasuke’s protests. 

“You think you own us and can destroy us on a whim?” Sakura spoke suddenly conviction written across her face. “You think we haven’t killed a god before?” She added stunning the fighters below her causing them to stop as they watched the scene laid out before them and glancing at their kneeled comrades. 

“What makes you think you could mimic their actions, girl,” Kaguya spoke with a sneer. 

“What makes you think you won’t mimic theirs.” Sakura retorts with a sad smile before she spoke almost unintelligibly a few words before runes glowed upon her skin. “A ninja can’t kill you, but a priestess? It’s what we are here for. People forget before the gods retreated we killed them for hurting us. It was the ability for humans to mold chakra that created peace, we worship to care and subdue you gods but more importantly the high priestess’s job is to put creatures like you down.” 

Sakura took the katana across her palm and smeared it with her blood but she didn’t move any closer to Kaguya as she used her feet and created a symbol around her similar to the one the Hidan used. Except as Sakura spoke words of power she didn’t expect to live however Kaguya would die too. 

As she pierced herself Sakura seemed to glow and Kaguya screamed. Blood poured from an unknown wound in Kaguya’s heart. 

The servants of the temple went for their priestess as she fell to the ground. They would exalt her. The first in centuries to kill a creature of the heavens. 

Kaguya crumbled to the ground and as Sakura glowed more, Kaguya began to fade until she was no more. 

It was almost anticlimactic as everyone realized Sakura had defeated Kaguya. It took a little bit longer for everyone else to realize she sacrificed herself. It would take a whole decade for everyone to realize just who Sakura was. 

“S-S-Sa-Sakura-chan?” Naruto called out as he moved to reach out for his pink-haired friend who was laying on the ground in a puddle of her own blood. 

“Don’t touch Sakura-sama.” A harsh voice cut through as a mismatched group of shinobi who recently shed their ninja headbands. 

Naruto scowled as he moved to shove pass the unknown male. “She’s our friend.”

“Sakura-sama is the high priestess and just sacrificed herself for us all.” A med-nin explains as she moves to check Sakura’s injuries. “We thought she abandoned us but in reality, she was saving us.”

“The gods work in mysterious ways. It’s our own shortcomings that allowed us to doubt our priestess.” 

“What?” Now it was Sasuke’s turn to be confused as Kakashi moved closer to the group because of the sigh of his fallen student.

However, Sakura’s group of followers ignored them as they slipped off Sakura’s headband and bandaged up her wound. They would try their best to keep her alive if the gods permitted it or Sakura would be buried at Monumomo and they would exalt her and rebuild the temple in her honor.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how I feel about this. It was supposed to be way different when I started but I kinda gave up a bit. Comment tell me what you think and if you guys want a sequel or other scenes I'll try my best to give them or it might just stay like this. 
> 
> also, Monumomo is completely made up I just thought it sounded cool


End file.
